This is Bullshit

That second yellow on Gio was an utter and complete farce. He got the ball. HE GOT THE BALL. Now he's sent off in minute 70 and the Bianconeri are doomed.


Scrooed and doomed.


This is too much for poor delicate Dirtbunny.

I need to take a break, and then I'll watch the end of the game.

The post about the Big Swede

Not this guy.

[lumberjack]

We love him, but he's merely a Big Swede.

This guy:

[roaring]

He's the Big Swede. He's the best futboller in the world, so of course, FC Dirtbunny has to have him.

Name: Zlatan Ibrahimovic

Occupation: Forward, Internazionale and Swedish International

Get over it. He's Swedish. His parents came from somewhere else but, jeez, if you're reading this, you're probably in the US of A, and I'll bet your people came from somewhere else somewhere down the road.

Zlatan: The Big Swede

See? It works just fine.

Dirtbunny doesn't have to justify any of her call-ups, and I hardly need to justify this one. But I will.

REASON NUMBER ONE

He is the best futboller in the world. Even better than the Delicate Princess over there on the right, no matter what FIFA says.

[I'm not the first to say this, but it was so apt I'll repeat it anyway. It looks like maybe Ujfi fouled Grygera, but who touched Cris?]

He's a very very large man, but he has skill and grace and he can bring the ball up the field and dribble and go around people and do cute little back-heel passes and headers and goals on the ground and goals going backwards from volley and goals pretty much anyway you can imagine and a few you haven't imagined yet. He's like Lionel Messi, only big and imposing and strong and a serious threat in the air. [*getting breathless just thinking about it*]

Whew. Slow down Dirtbunny.

REASON NUMBER TWO

He's hard on defenders, which is as it should be, because this is not golf.

[stiff-arming a big, tough Greek guy]

[he's pretty flexible, isn't he? Poor, poor little frightened Croatian nose on poor, poor number 4]

[not very kind to Croatian number 8 either]

[gettin' the best of Khaka Kaladze]

[Sergio Ramos' thought bubble, option 1: "Please don't hurt me Zlatan!']

[Sergio Ramos' thought bubble, option 2: "Not in the mouth! I need the lips for Raul!"]

REASON NUMBER THREE

He's a worthy opponent for Gio. They bring out the best in each other.

[makin' him work for it]

What Gio dishes out, Zlatan can take.

REASON NUMBER FOUR

This goal in the Euros against eventual champion Spain:

[Iker sprawled on the pitch, failing to save the goal. Sergio Ramos on his butt, failing to defend same.]

Iker spends most of his time sitting behind the goal in a smoking jacket, sipping a cognac whilst writing his memoirs. He is rarely called upon to do much. But he can do plenty when it is required of him. Some say he's the best goalie in the world. He's not. But he is one of the best.



If you can make Iker appear in this position in a photograph, ESPECIALLY IF THE BALL IS CLEARLY SHOWN IN THE GOAL BEHIND HIM, then you are doing something right.

Tangent: The Big Swede made Sergio Ramos look as unskilled as Dirtbunny in that game. Poor muscle-bound kid, sitting on his ass, staring at Iker's buttocks. Let me assure you, Sergio Ramos is no slouch. Nosirreebob he is not. He is a fine, fine, fullback, but he cannot keep the best futboller in the world from scoring.

REASON NUMBER FIVE

Love. Love is important.

[this photo is from last year. I see ADP has recurring problems with ghastly haircuts and that the most recent one is apparently part of a pattern]

Love stinks. Love hurts. Love is a battlefield.

But if you can get some love, love, love is all you need, blah blah blah. Or so I'm told. Personally, I wouldn't know.

REASON NUMBER SIX

Daddy, this part really isn't meant for you.


OK. Are we alone now? Good.

Reason number five is that Zlatan is hott.




Lordy, lordy, lordy, can he rock the bitchpose or what?

It's not that hard to find photos of him without his shirt, or pants, or wearing a towel, or showing off his tatoos, but we wouldn't want your computer to explode.

REASON NUMBER SEVEN

Dude works hard to be cool. However, when he's really, really happy, and doing what he loves, he forgets about the game face and becomes the biggest dork EVER.

[Zlatan likes to play with the ball.]

[Gee guys, isn't this cool? We get paid for this. Can you believe it?]

[Golly! Trophies are fun!]

And then, there's the Zlatanjoy!

He's not too cool fer skool, he only plays too cool fer skool on TV.

I bet he listens to ABBA when no one's around.

olof olof olof

Dear Lord. Finger guns. Nay! DOUBLE finger guns.

Good gravy but you have to love someone who is so completely himself. I bet his publicist thinks he's a nightmare.

REASON NUMBER EIGHT

He needs me.

Oh God, how desperately he needs me. Trust me, I would never, never let this happen again.

Still not watching

Plus, the cable may be effed up. Oh, well.

[Azzurri at the Euros last summer: Fabi (mouthbreathing), Gio (possibly about to hurl), ADP (checking contents of nose while in halfbitchpose), Luca (in bitchpose), CamoranesiCamoranesiCamoranesi (grinding teeth), and Gian (checking the hair)]

Football = suffering

P.S. Spell-check recognizes the word "effed."

Hey Rangers Fan!

Just because you're busted doesn't mean you aren't welcome anymore.


The Man and I watched Liverpool and Real Madrid yesterday. We started the Juve game, but it was late, and when Pavel went down inside the first five minutes, I lost my nerve and decided to go to bed. So I don't know what happened yet. I'll watch tonight. In the meantime, I'll have to stay off the interwebs so I don't spoil the suspense.

Catching up with Dirtbunny

1. Because I haven't felt like blogging. That's why.

2. Well, I do think Italian soccer players are interesting.

3. That's between me and ADP.

4. FC Dirtbunny is not about the looks.

Hotness is not the reason for loving Gio. He's got charisma, but not beauty.

Gigi isn't exactly beautiful either, and I cannot condone that jacket unless he is poor and got it from a charity drive, which seems unlikely, somehow.

And beauty is not enough to get Marco Borriello a call-up. Did you know that doing a Google Image search on Borri is likely to turn up nekkid or half-nekkid photos of him and various females that are NSFW? Keep it clean, and do it at home.

5. Speaking of did you know, Did you know that pretty much all futbollers bear the unmistakable mark of the ancient broken nose? Go back and look for yourself. Even Borri. I guess they've all gotten smashed in the face with the ball at some point.

6. Yes, we did have weather last week.

Rather a lot of it.

But it was 75 degrees yesterday, and so it's all gone now.

7. Did you know that Yarn Bandit would much rather not go out in the snow. If you don't mind, he'd rather just pee on the rug, thank you very much.

8. On the other hand, Bunny's Special Sweetheart likes the snow. It's one of those few things that provokes actual frolicking. He has a little problem with the whole en fuego yeast infection again. He likes to lick his paws, and they're itchy because of the allergies, so he licks them a lot, which makes for a nice warm, damp home for little beasties to grow. So we thought it was gone, but then he licked new holes in his paws. So we put him in a donut, because he hates the satellite dish:

That was comfy enough, and it pushed his ears forward and made him even cuter than usual. But he could still reach the tops of his feet, if not the bottoms, and so the bottoms got better but he licked a new hole in the top of his foot.

Now he has a new and improved satellite dish that's padded and a little flexible, but keeps him from reaching his paws. He's OK with it, but he doesn't love it.

When we're around to watch him, we'll take it off him unless/until he starts up with the licking.

He can sleep in it even. And we have figured out how to get the medicine between his toes without traumatizing him or getting bitten. Ugh. This is a long-term issue for which the dish is not a very good solution, but first we still have to do the cancer thing.

He's totally worth it.

[I love him so much. *sobs*]

9. This week on The Amazing Race, it was a descent to the lowest common denominator as the contestants went to Siberia. First stop was a huge hydroelectric dam that appears on one of the ruble notes. Built during the Soviet era, it bore one of those giant propaganda posters so popular with the communists back then. Perhaps you recognize this guy:

His image provoked confusion on some teams. One team took a vote and decided that he must have been the guy who built the dam. Okay then.

Next, they had to unscramble a whopping six letters to reveal the name of a Russian playwright. I can name a bunch of Russian authors off the top of my head, but only one playwright. How about you?

Anyway, these are the letters: H V E K H C O

How to solve? How to solve? [muses, wonders]

I get stuck with those letters and I say, "Neato! I only know one Russian playwright and those are his letters." If you are The Man listening from the other room and you don't know what the letters are, you can guess the playwright's name by hollering out "It's Chekhov, isn't it?"

One team solved the puzzle by looking at the letters and saying "Chekhov. Everyone knows Chekhov."

One team solved the puzzle by thinking, "I hope it's Chekhov because that's the only Russian playwright I know."

One team solved the puzzle by thinking, OK Russian names end in sounds like "ski" and "ov." Seeing no letter combination that ended in "ski," they went with "ov" and worked backwards from there.

Every other team solved the puzzle by randomly guessing and trying for letter combinations that might make actual sounds.

The deaf guy had it rough because he didn't learn to read the way we all did (by associating the letters with sounds) and he strung together some fairly discordant letter combinations, but he still got it faster than some of the other teams.

This show used to be smart. sigh

10. Futbol = suffering (mostly)

[do you see the little broken nose bump up there?]

Champions League tomorrow. Don't call me. I'll be drunk-slash-busy.

So the Bianconeri have given me another nail-biting 1-0 win against a vastly inferior team with ADP on the bench "being rested" the whole time. I cannot say that this weekend's slim victory over Torino was enjoyable. I can say, however, that Gio is well and truly back from his injury of earlier this season, back at full strength, and deserving of his call-up to FC Dirtbunny. Here he is, Giorgio Chiellini, Azzurri starter and Juventus central defender, doing what he is best known for:

Defending the crap out of the other team, even if means fouling someone on his own team to make the play. Oh wait, that's just Molinaro back there. No worries. Foul away!

He can defend against anybody, but he is also good on corner kicks, where he can be depended on to score a few headers every season, like he did on Saturday to give the Old Lady the win:

[trust me--this was a goal off his fuzzy head]

Scoring goals makes Gio very happy, and it sends him into his usual three-step routine:

[One: the roaring and the fist-clenching]

[Two: the prancing, while roaring and fist-clenching]

[hey, look, it's that wanker, Iaquinta, co-prancing uselessly in the background as though he actually had something to do with the big win, which he didn't, I assure you]

[Three: the man-hugging. "Come here, Olof, and get some from Gio. There's lots of room in my giant albatross arms."]

Gigi, as you might suspect, loves Gio, although this photo is from last season.








Gio likes to hug Captain Alex, but, as I mentioned, ADP was "resting" during the game, if by resting, they meant compulsively pretending to go through warm-ups starting at about minute 30, anxiously pacing the sideline, and hanging out next to Coach instead of sitting quietly in the dugout like a good bench warmer. I cannot document any post-goal ADP hugs from the game.


But I am pretty sure they like each other. I think I see some eye-twinkling.

[camoranesi camoranesi camoranesi]

And here they are on a chaste little date during the Euros, wearing their mandatory logo-covered product-placement "street" clothes. Poor guys.

Someone needs to knit them a sweater.

Just go with it

For Italian futbol fans, Fabio Cannavaro is the ultimate. He is the beloved capi of the Azzurri--BELOVED--and frequently recognized as one of the very best central defenders of all time. I've been trying to understand this. I try to keep my eyes on him during Real Madrid matches (cuz that's where he plays now) to see what's so special. I'm not seeing anything transcendent. Maybe it's because the royal whites are doing so well lately that they haven't needed much defense. Maybe he looks too much like Pepe from a distance (similar size, same hair, numbers 3 and 5) and I just can't tell. Maybe it's too late in his career and I've missed most of what has made him so great. I dunno. I've been waiting and waiting for him to give me a reason to call him up.




Is this a good reason?






Well, that was a while ago, and looks aren't everything.




What about this?

Yes, well, we all want Gigi to be happy, but I think Dirtbunny is enough to keep him happy.

And then, deep in the dark steamy bowels of the Interwebs, I found my reason.

Get up, Cris, you big whiner. This is futbol, not golf. You may be the current FIFA World Player of the Year, but you are still a great big crybaby. What? Do you expect the defense to just let you in?

So Capi is in. Welcome to FC Dirtbunny.